Growth

Spoiler alert: Urbana may leave you asking new questions, even as it helps you find answers. The good news is, finding these answers is a journey and Urbana connects you with traveling companions who can help.

Dear Parent, In three days our youth group will be off to Florida. This is a trip they have prayed, worked and prepared for, for many weeks. Their (and our) effort and attention have been on the “entry” side of the mission experience. I am writing to help us prepare them for their “reentry.

When you spend significant time in another culture, your values and attitudes will often change, but when you come back to an environment that has not changed, the dissonance can be disorienting. The deeper these attitude and value changes are, the more likely the re-entry period will be unsettling.

I felt God saying that the work was his before I got there and it will be his long after I’ve left. God’s kingdom coming to Mokkattam wasn’t contingent upon my presence there. Heartbroken, I committed the work back to him. In faith, I committed the work back to him. I am not the savior. Nor am I the solution. God alone is. And I can trust him.

Back at the end of March, we mailed out a print publication called Testify to all Urbana 15 participants. While we don’t have anymore Testify’s in print, we have been we publishing posts from Testify here on urbana.org. Here they are all gathered together for your reading pleasure.

Since so much of my life has been invested in travel, much of it international, I’ve observed something about those of us who possess the power, privilege, and money to travel overseas; sometimes we end up treating the world like a product to be consumed.

God is not seeking so much to use us as to love us. Our participation in his work comes out of his love for us, not the other way around. If we really want to be a part of God’s work we must first linger in his love for us in the present.

We wrap everything we’re afraid of losing in layers and layers of bubble wrap and overlook the thing which we ought to be afraid of—namely, suffocating in all that bubble wrap! All of our risk-averse padding has immobilized us; we’re choking in our protective gear.